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evidence at trial and presented only legal arguments to the
Court.
As noted above, because of the fire in petitioners’
residence and the damages that resulted, the parties stipulated
summaries of information provided by petitioners during
respondent’s audit to support the claimed expense deductions
reported for 1997. The parties did not stipulate any summaries
for 1998.
We find that the summaries are inadequate to substantiate
the claimed deductions. For example, we find petitioners’ use of
the same mileage and parking fee for each school visited and
their claim that they visited each school in alphabetical order
implausible. Also, as support for the travel expenses,
petitioners provided, for the most part, their own written and
oral testimony. For the few receipts that were provided for the
trips (most notably, two trips to Florida taken in mid-March and
late December), petitioners offered only testimony that the trips
were for the purpose of job-hunting or continuing education. We
find that petitioners’ proffered testimony does not qualify as
reasonable secondary evidence to replace that required by the
stringent record-keeping rules of section 274(d).
Petitioners argue that these expenses were necessary for Mr.
Evan to maintain and improve his skills as a professor and to
keep his real estate license active, a requirement for teaching
real estate and appraising. Although, according to the
summaries, petitioners did provide receipts for some expenses, we
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